


In Translation

by likeadeuce



Category: Henry V - Shakespeare, Shakespeare Histories - Fandom
Genre: Bad French, F/M, language barriers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7834951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry and Catherine are married, and he's still working on his French.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Translation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cheshireArcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshireArcher/gifts).



> For clarity, Henry's wife/the Queen is "Catherine" or "Cat," while Hotspur's wife is "Kate".
> 
> Thanks to my beta for help with French and with Chaucer.

Henry knocked lightly on the door to the Queen’s antechamber. One of her young ladies in waiting opened it and greeted him in a barrage of French, which she spoke far faster than he could hope to follow. He would have liked to suppose the girl was too intimidated his majestic presence to behave rationally, but the truth was that she could not be convinced he was really that incompetent in her language. He missed Dame Alice, left behind in France, who was always more than happy to treat him as a simpleton. 

“ _C'est la Reine --” Henry began, then, pointing inside because he suspected he had the preposition wrong “ _au de sa chambre_?”_

“ _Oui, oui,_ said the girl, and . . . something else Henry wasn’t sure of. But he did manage to convey that her services would not be needed for the remainder of the evening, news she greeted with such a smile that he wondered who in the palace she might be eager to meet. 

He rapped on the inner door of Catherine’s solar, received an, “ _Entre!_ , and entered to the sight of his wife seated at her dressing table. She wore a loose robe, and waves of chestnut hair hung loose past her shoulders.

”Good evening, my love,” he said (she always giggled when he tried _ma cherie_ although he really thought he had it right, and it was an exceptionally lovely giggle but not the tone he wanted to set at the moment.)

”Husband,” Catherine said and the smile that spread over her face came as a relief, even though she had never yet failed to greet his approach with a smile. She began to rise but he shook his head and spread out a hand to signal she should stay. This seemed to express the point, and he pushed over a stool to sit by her side.

”I am sorry -- _Je suis désolé_ \-- I have been working so long today. Are you well?”

”Ah, _oui_. _Ma mère_ , she did discover many books --” Catherine pointed at several volumes laid out her desk. “She did send to me with my cousin that arrive of France, and I commence to read.” She mimed the action, then flipped the thin volume to show Henry the cover. “ _Regarde!_ ,” she said, and beamed at him. “In the English!”

 _The Book of the Duchess_ , Henry read. “Oh, yes,” he said, “Chaucer,” with the relief of _knowing this one_ ringing in his mind. “I knew him. He wrote that one, actually, about my --” 

” _Ta Grand-mere. Je sais._ ” Of course she knew, although fortunately he hadn’t put a wrinkle in her enthused, open smile.

After searching his mind for an anecdote about the great poet that _not_ everyone knew, he leaned closer to her, and said, “I remember Harry Percy almost biting off the old scribbler’s index finger --” Henry raised a hand to his mouth to mime the gesture. 

Now Catherine’s brow wrinkled, and she lifted her finger to mirror Henry’s action. “ _Pourquoi_?”

“Why indeed? I suppose he was trying to shut Percy up. Same reason anyone did anything to him, I suppose..”

Catherine sat back and examined Henry’s face, as though trying to determine which part of the baffling story to explore first. Finally she said, “Percy is the . . . young man from the North? Son to Baroness Kate?” 

Of course, Catherine would only know the younger Percy, raised by his mother and conscious of the need to preserve royal favor, in the way his forebears never had been. When he was at court, at least, the young man’s behavior was unimpeachable.

”This was, ahh, his father. We knew each other, when we were boys, and -- “ How could one even begin to explain Hotspur. Either do it in rough, plain English, or accept that a hundred languages wouldn’t suffice. Employing a French phrase that he had gotten much good use from, Henry said, with a demonstrative shrug, “ _Cela n'a pas d'importance._ ”

Catherine produced the requisite giggle in response to his French; it was a blessing that he liked her laugh so very much. Then she took the small book, opened it to the front, and, said, enunciating every syllable, “Actually --” Her small finger pointed at a name inscribed on the flyleaf.” Monsieur Chaucer made a gift of this book for my sister, rest to her soul, when that she reside in England.”

”Oh, of course,” Henry said. And here he had been hinting at tales of King Richard’s court, where he had served time, for the most part, as an unremarkable and unremarked-on youth, when her sister Isabel had been Richard’s queen. The books Catherine was perusing with enthusiasm were part of a dead kinswoman’s bequest. 

Maybe he looked chastened, because Catherine reached across the table to put her hand on his wrist. With a reassuring touch, she said, “Isabel, she had great love for . . .” She stumbled over her next word a little and gave him an inquiring look “. . .For the poemtries?”

”Poetry,” said Henry. “Or -- poems, I suppose.”

She wrinkled her nose, as she sometimes did, at the oddities of English. “When I was the girl, I did not, so much as Isabel, endeavor to the-- _Comment dit-on ètudier’_?” 

”To study.” _Entre nous_ , when I was the boy, I did not so much endeavor to study, either. And so here we are.”

”So here we are,” Catherine repeated. “I am grown. So I study the books now.”

”And you will do well,” Henry pronounced, “Because you are very clever. But tell me. You are in here by yourself. I was with the council all day. I left you alone. Do you not enjoy the company--” He searched for the proper phrase here, the proper concept. “The ladies of court. Are you not -- are the people here not friends to you?”

Catherine took a moment to consider this question -- or maybe she was simply parsing it. The concept was hard enough in a single language, Henry realized; he wasn’t sure he could have answered it himself.

Slowly, she spoke. “I like the ladies of England. Your aunt the countess, and your lady cousins, and --” At this pause she seemed to ponder who she might be forgetting.

”Essentially,” said Henry, “They’re all some sort of my cousins.”

”Your cousins, then.” She smiled. “They are kind and . . .of good manners and. . . _aimable_ \--” Here she switched to French, although Henry was fairly certain _aimable_ just meant kind, and also that this was perhaps not a notable feature of court ladies. Maybe she thought this was what he wanted to hear; or maybe the French really were that much worse and this felt like a holiday? 

”But --” Catherine said. (Ahh, here it came). “They are -- there are --” Here she spread her hands, popping her fingers as though to demonstrate an impressive fireworks. “Many ladies. Very many!”

She was so animated, and yet so earnest, Henry couldn’t help letting at a surprised laugh. She cast him a quick look, maybe wondering if he was mocking her, and so he nodded his vigorous agreement. “Yes,” he said. “There are very very many ladies at this court.”

Encouraged by his agreement, she continued. “Very many ladies. Sometimes I very like to --” She mouths the next word carefully, as though it is new to her. “To escape?”

”Oh yes.” He laughed again. “Very many ladies at the court, very many men in my council -- very many brothers, and that’s literal brothers, not the metaphorical ‘we happy few’ kind. To escape would be . . .”

He stopped and glanced toward his wife. He’d started rambling and lost her, she couldn’t have any idea what he was on about. But her eyes sparkled and it hit him, with the force of a siege engine, as he leaned in to kiss her, how very fond he was of the woman he had married. 

**Author's Note:**

> The Chaucer biting incident is, tragically, not historical (AS FAR AS WE KNOW) but it features in my favorite Hotspur fic, [Pessimi Poetae](http://thisengland.livejournal.com/30950.html) by Speak_me_fair


End file.
